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First Steganographic Image Found In The Wild

Posted by timothy on from the monkeying-with-images dept.

Niels Provos writes: "After months of searching for steganographic content on eBay and elsewhere -- downloading millions of images, we were finally able to find an image with a stegangraphic message hidden in it. Stegdetect and Stegbreak made short process with it. It took less than a second to compute the secret key necessary to extract the hidden message. Two commands at the prompt, and we found the hidden message to be an image of B-52 scrapyard. Right off Terraserver."

1 of 306 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Yeah, except for... by stilwebm · · Score: 3, Offtopic

    While the above post was meant to be humorous, it brings up an important point. The Taliban doesn't always utilize the most high tech tools, and for good reasons - they are often easy to track and/or detect. Instead, they are likely to use low tech mothods to hide their messages. Certain phrases, for example, in bin Laden's statements quite possible are intended to send an additional pre-defined meaning. This is something that only human reconnaissance can effectively decode.